A CRITICISM OF LIFE? 317 



not so much matter what a poet says as how he says it, and 

 that the highest poetical achievements are those which com- 

 bine a certain vagueness of meaning with sensuous melody 

 and colour of verbal composition. Yet, if one thing is proved 

 with certainty by the whole history of literature down to our 

 own time, it is that the self-preservative instinct of humanity 

 rejects such art as does not contribute to its intellectual 

 nutrition and moral sustenance. It cannot afford to continue 

 long in contact with ideas that run counter to the principles 

 of its own progress. It cannot bestow more than passing 

 notice upon trifles, however exquisitely finished. Poetry will 

 not, indeed, live without style or its equivalent. But style 

 alone will never confer enduring and cosmopolitan fame upon 

 a poet. He must have placed himself in accord with the 

 permanent emotions, the conservative forces of the race ; he 

 must have uttered what contributes to the building up of 

 vital structure in the social organism, in order to gain more 

 than a temporary or a partial hearing. Though style is an 

 indispensable condition of success in poetry, it is by matter, 

 and not by form, that a poet has to take his final rank. 



Of the two less perfect kinds of poetry, the poetry of 

 revolt and the poetry of indifference, the latter has by far the 

 slighter chance of survival. Powerful negation implies that 

 which it rebels against. The energy of the rebellious spirit 

 is itself a kind of moral greatness. We are braced and 

 hardened by contact with impassioned revolutionaries, with 

 Lucretius, Voltaire, Leopardi. Something necessary to the 

 onward progress of mankind the vigour of antagonism, the 

 operative force of the antithesis is communicated by them. 

 They are in a high sense ethical by the exhibition of 

 hardihood, self-reliance, hatred of hypocrisy. Even Omar's 

 secession from the mosque to the tavern symbolises a neces- 

 sary and recurring moment of experience. It is, moreover, 

 dignified by the pathos of the poet's view of life. Meleager's 

 sensuality is condoned by the delicacy of his sentiment. 

 Tone counts for much in the poetry of revolt against morals. 

 It is only the Stratons, the Beccadellis, the Baudelaires, who, 

 in spite of their consummate form, are consigned to poetical 



